Hypnotherapy demonstration session

People are often unsure what a hypnotherapy session is and what it might involve so while I was filming and helping at a British Hypnosis Research Master Practitioner Training at Roehampton University in August 2011 I took the opportunity to work with one of the students.

We actually started the session with Matthias working on me. Matthias is an inspirational man that wanted to learn Hypnotherapy despite being blind. He was initially concerned that he would not be able succeed as hypnosis requires a lot of observation and utilisation. There are clearly techniques Matthias can’t use but another important attribute of Hypnotherapy is being flexible and utilising what you do have and Matthias is excellent at this. Matthias wanted to inspire other people with limitations and we therefore decided to film a session where he worked on me. I am not an easy hypnosis subject as I am constantly working on myself in self-hypnosis and haven’t had much opportunity to be a subject of a good hypnotherapists. When I said “I was going to be a helpful subject” I think I was convincing myself! I have included that video at the end of the page in case you would like to see it. It might also explain a few peices of conversation in the session I did with Matthias.

When talking about what to do in the sessions Matthias had said he had thought of something he would like to work on me with and so when Matthias told me his sight had worsen a few years before I though lets see what Matthias can do for himself. My session lasts about 70 minutes and the first 25 minutes don’t involve trance. Because it was my idea as to what I wanted to work on I had to make sure Matthias was happy with. It would be highly unethical for me to just decide to work on his eyesight and not consider that he might perceive more advantages in his life by it remaining as it was. Once I was satisfied my idea meet with approval I went ahead and worked on it but I also gave many other ways for improvements to occur. I am not my client so I don’t know what is best for their overall health and well being. I can make suggestions but hypnotherapy is about creating opportunities for change and then seeing what happens.

Did I realistically expect to achieve anything from the session? I am no longer realistic. Being realistic held me back in my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for 15 years as I say towards the end of the session. Being realistic is just another way of putting limits on something. My job is to create and release potential in people.I believe all positive thoughts have the potential of helping us so I would expect Matthias to make gains from the session. If he told me he his vision had improved after a few weeks I would not be surprised. The next day he did tell me how excited he was that he could see objects in his mind in greater detail and how that would help him in is work on Artificial Intelligence. This seemed a great short term outcome and I would be pleased with just that. I do believe however some changes take time for the unconscious mind to implement and I look forward to seeing what, if anything, Matthias tells me over time.